Subject Reflux
by Zaedah
Summary: Or... Can you reschedule your mid-life crisis for noon?
1. Nowhere

_Apologies for the delay... Roy Khan left Kamelot and thus I was busy sobbing in a corner._

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><p><strong>Subject Reflux<strong>

"You think we'll ever get it right?"

The rapid blink that follows suggests that particular horse wasn't given clearance to leave the gate. The speaker arranges what features aren't frozen by surprise into practiced disinterest. It's a question, an observation. And everything that's wrong with them lives in its unanswerable folds.

She doesn't intend to respond, not during this stakeout. Not during this lifetime. And certainly not with this level of boredom and caffeine clogging this vehicle. Unsanctioned truth waits for moments like this and she wants no part of it.

There's a wrapper on the floorboard and the crumpled state of it, proving it had yielded to a greater force, seems like a testament of some cruel sort.

On a side street saturated by every available ounce of humidity from the post-dawn sun, the unmarked car sits in what is only an inconspicuous manner if the suspect is blind. They want him to know they're waiting. Intimidation by blatancy. What is equally obvious is Tony's reason for triggering the bomb before troubling himself with the ramifications.

Namely, he's unreasonable.

All-nighters tend to devolve their conversations into the most primitive of subjects, somewhere between the yawns and raw discontent. And now, with the power of waking summer battering the windshield, Tony probably hates that he's spoken. Which doesn't stop him from anticipating an answer. There is none. Not for them.

And so her scheme is simple; make him explain and he'll abandon the topic like a clinging date.

"Define right," she poses.

"I don't think I can."

"By your inquiry, I presume you have parameters in mind."

The sun has coasted just far enough to the side that the suspect's apartment building no longer blocks the glare. Shadows shift without mercy, spilling onto the trunk and leaving the occupants to roast. Ziva glances at her partner, the look a second too long bu he doesn't notice. He's not trapped in the swelter anymore. He's somewhere else, where the definitions of right are being weighed, calculated and measured out against their reality.

"Should be easier," Tony says to the dashboard, which offers no comment. Nor will she because she can count the minutes until there are two different conversations happening. As usual. What he means and what he'll admit to meaning later.

The dashboard gauges are blocked by the glare, the digital clock coated in a sheen of yellow, the lack of numeric evidence proof that time has indeed stopped.

"You are confusing our lives with one of your cinemas."

When he grins, something important slips through the firmer grasp of his introspection, leading him back to the safety of jest. "We'd need more car chases to resemble one of my movies."

"Convince Hollister to run and you will get your wish."

Given the prior mood, Ziva chokes down the silence that will precede the lecture; they are the ones who run, they don't secure many wishes. Neither arrives and it feels almost safe to breathe. Except comfort is hardly a toy in Tony's sandbox.

"Why isn't it easier?"

Subject reflux, the rise and return of sour topics, sounds like this.

"Cooperating criminals would put us out of a job," she says in what she hopes is death to this debate.

Eyes rubbed red in the long night actually bother to betray his disappointment. Like he's trying to make a point to a toddler. But there's no room for this nonsense. In this car. In this partnership. In this thing that isn't a thing.

"You know what I meant." His tone is a presumption that says she's not hiding well.

"Rarely."

The sigh is audible annoyance. "This is going nowhere."

Oh, that meaning wears no shroud. Ziva presses hands to her jeans, strategizing how to extract her belt from its loops without announcing her intention to strangle him with it. Ultimately, verbal defense is a poor substitute for homicide but it's all she has.

"Failure does not stem from any lack of effort on my part."

"Not blaming you." Tony gestures to the apartment. "I just don't think he's going anywhere."

Two different conversations. As usual. It's not that she wants to open her heart in the stifling heat of a black sedan and let him shuffle through the scorched contents but his tendency to start without finishing...

"We don't always get it wrong, you know."

Of course he would choose now to deviate. She plans to turn in her seat and stare him into a puddle of flesh, leaving only gelatinous bones to verify his former existence. But what she actually does is plaster her cheek to the passenger window, look skyward and pray that a vindictive god will launch the suspect off the roof. Right now.

Something - acceptance, offense – sifts through Tony's voice. "You don't want to talk about this."

"Talk is unsafe in containment."

"Because your gun might go off in the vicinity of my head?"

"Because, as you deny pointing out, this is going nowhere."

"So," and damn him for warming to it, "we can label something _this_ without actually agreeing on the context?"

The plan, the one with the turning and the staring and the puddle, now features the suggested gun to the head. That she moves so fast in the tight cabin drives the startled man deeper into his seat. She leans just so, enough to invade his space and refuse him the satisfaction of contact.

"Why the need?" she demands, face inches from his. "Has she bored you already? Did she step all over your commitment fears?"

"Only asked a question, ninja."

"No, you bring up 'something' that you will later demote to 'nothing' when it suits you. We get nothing right because we are engineered for dishonesty." Backing off, she resumes her post at the window, pleased that her voice had given away only anger.

"How do we fix that?"

Because his eyes are trained on the treeline, she detects that this time no answer is expected. Of course, he gets the last word in but she'll grant that in exchange for the quiet that follows.

Her statement is correct. Their universal truth is the tolerable lie, a paradox that encompasses their affiliation with each other and nearly everyone around them. So comfortable in the trappings that it becomes easier to simply leave them on, ignoring the occasional chafing on the theory that it's better to be blanketed by bruising of one's own making than to allow another the privilege of infliction.

Which doesn't mean they won't take a swing. But their aim is typically off, intention just left of wounding and banter just south of direct. It's why neither has fallen into partnercide.

The beaten path of a hurried sun assures that time is now functioning.

Later she'll consider opening the floor again, based solely on renewed boredom and not because his voice is enchanting in a losing fight. Except Hollister makes an appearance. And the pair slide into tandem; exiting, circling and closing ranks without verbal communication. The senses are alert, reflexes coiled as though hours hadn't been spent languishing in a mobile oven. And then there's a gun in the wrong hand, aimed at her partner and though the poor shot impacts the pavement three feet away, hers will not miss. A decimated knee cap is the least of Hollister's issues.

He will always remember her when it rains.

Ziva holsters her sidearm and climbs almost gratefully into the sweltering vehicle. Tony steers them into a day that holds a shower, a danish and the prospect of sleep that Gibbs will surely interrupt. Still, it's more of a conclusion than their debate received.

"Sometimes," she tells Tony between yawns, "we get things right."


	2. Because

_For LittleSammy's prompt:_ _I think, therefore I am in trouble._

_Not necessarily a direct descendant of the first chapter. Not necessarily in the same universe. But connected, s all things are, by a theory...  
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><p><strong>Subject Reflux<strong>

**Second Verse**

The answer, in its one-word simplicity, covers all the mandatory bases that he could possible establish at such a ridiculous hour. Of course, he takes the contrary position out of what she can only label misguided malice. Her reply is summarily dismissed. Like her notion that being in bed, naked and sated, is a clear announcement of a future agenda. Namely sleep.

"Not good enough."

Ziva's groan should be taken as a precursor to death. Eyes are sealed shut with the residue of exhaustion or she'd have glared him into the next dimension.

"Lets say A kills B," Tony explains in a voice lending too much passion to a post-midnight hypothetical "Ask A why and he says, 'because.' You're satisfied with that?"

"At 2 am? Yes."

"So, to clarify, you're fine with _because_ as an answer to life's most crucial questions."

"I am, in fact, planning my defense around it when I kill you."

And when the court details how her lover was debating age old unknowables in the dead of night, she'll be exonerated.

The pillow is cool on her cheek and she presses closer, breathing into fabric softener and the overlay of activities from hours ago. At least it had tired one of them out. The other is wrought with insomnia, a common nuisance that brings nothing to their relationship besides probable cause.

The issue of humanity's purpose, the why-are-we-here and how-can-we-know conundrum, isn't enough for Tony tonight. Or this morning. Or whatever. No, he's adding variations on afterlife inconsequentials to his list...

Are there quotas on good deeds? Does Heaven run instructional seminars on harp playing? Is the line at the pearly gate run like the DMV? Will there be _You Are Here_ directories?

But as the crickets moan for his noise, it always comes back to why people exist. He doesn't appreciate her lack of nocturnal interest in the Grand Plan. He doesn't appreciate that five am approaches with the speed of oncoming traffic. The pillow doesn't quite muffle her version of primal scream therapy.

"Can you reschedule your mid-life crisis for noon?"

"It's not a midlife crisis."

By his uneasy chuckle, she's just handed him something knew to worry about. With one eye cracked open, Ziva watches a distorted shadow cross over the bedspread as he wanders from window to window. Thinking in a way that's outlawed in civilized regions. Dictators use this sort of free-form, leapfrog logic to sprinkle wars into the commoner's recipe.

"Then what is it?"

The answer is no mystery, but if he's determined to keep her up, he should have the courtesy to speak the words. And it's only because she has arrived at a place where vocalization matters that he finally shuts up. Men possess all the convenience of poison ivy.

Ziva wants to remind him that nothing is as futile as an inner debate. He'll never win a battle where the opponent doesn't fight fair and who plays dirtier than one's own conscience? That he gets like this at times, introspective in safe privacy, is no surprise. The job calls for both the gravity and levity. They each fall victim to fruitless questions but she leaves such epic deliberations for daylight, when answers can't dart so quickly behind the apron of shielding night.

The trouble with charmers is their capacity for the right words or at least inappropriate ones that smash through melancholy. But she lacks a nurturing vocabulary at any time of day. And so she'll resort to huffed commands peppered with exasperation since their efficacy has been repeatedly proven.

"Come to bed."

He's rubbing at his forearms now and for this she'll silently rise, tracking the movement of involuntary fingers. There will be a sensation of phantom glass pelting his flesh, the heat scalding his skin. It's been six days and time's purported healing factor is a lie.

Evolution is the process of questioning what is not understood and then flogging oneself for taking too long to grasp it. However imaginary the cat o'nine, his hold on the implement is tight. But she prefers his flesh intact.

The floor is chilled where he hasn't worn a rut into it. Years, months, even weeks ago she'd have let this go. Back when they never got things right. But her hands will reach for him, turn him and fold around him. And he will accept it faster than the platitudes she spills into the deep.

"She should have survived, but she didn't. And sometimes the only reason is _because_."

"Should've been faster, should've heard her before..."

And when the guilt sucks his words dry, there is only breathing left. Ziva's inhalations still taste like smoke and she thinks maybe he's still exhaling it. Overwhelming, the noxious damnation that is fire's scent and the little girl's blood had hung like vile seasoning just below, the barest note on the palate. Tony had pulled her out and she'd clung to him and life with a child's confidence that the promises of adults are sacred and sure. Until today, when her tiny fingers finally released the thin cord.

Her rescuer won't be satisfied with because. No one mourns as thoroughly as a good man.

However poor a substitute, Ziva presses consolidation into his shoulder in the form of words he can't translate. The why's of old Hebrew proverbs, hollowness to explain it all away. Give him this offering because sometimes pandering kindness does more than well-placed jest.

What is a midlife crisis if not the moment when the naive mind catches up with unrepentant reality?

"It's just..." then he gathers himself up, dust in the pan to be cast aside. "No, you're right."

Resignation is carried to the mattress, deposited onto its overpriced softness and he'll let it lie there since they don't do heartfelt without arm-twisting. He tightens the bolts on his mouth, which answers her earlier craving. But the shut-off valve for his brain has been rusted into an open position. Hearing someone thinking is fairly grating.

"Don't do that," she warns, though it renounces coveted sleep. "Finish what you start."

In the wait, she will fluff her pillow, smooth the sheet and plop down beside him. She could touch him, could let fingers scratch holes in his tenseness until it relents. Or let their world lapse into the kind of silence that breeds rewarding slumber. She does none and perhaps he appreciates it.

"I got the final report today," he says. "Accidental fire. Some retiree fell asleep smoking."

"And he gets to continue an already long life while she doesn't."

"Exactly."

"Then I lament his curse. To live under the weight of such a mistake and despite the wisdom of years, never be able to fix it."

Apparently, dead tired is the state under which she works best. Something slides into place for him with a nearly deafening click. More reason to ponder, to search the ceiling for infinitives. But at least he'll do it quietly now.

"So, why _are_ we here?"

It's no longer about the fading hourglass or human origin or even a dead child. This is about her arrival in his bed without invitation, without deception and quite honestly without a plan beyond sex and sleep in no special order. On that scale, she's hitting fifty percent. So she'll yawn her reply.

"Because."

And it's finally good enough.


End file.
